Clegg outlines a framework for measuring culture by defining core values, then grading employee behavior as plus, plus/minus, or minus against those standards. About 50% of new hires leave before one year. Employees who don't demonstrate core behaviors get 30 days to improve or leave.
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Most of us were never taught how to measure culture, especially measuring company culture. The reasons I hear most often is because, you know, Clegg, culture is subjective, but yet you know what culture feels like when it's great culture. And you definitely know what it feels like when a culture sucks. But what if you had a way to measure it objectively? Every leader knows how important culture is, but it tends to be that elusive thing that you can't quite put your thumb on. And it seems pretty hard to measure. But there's actually a way to measure culture. And we're going to show you how to do that in this video. Before I show you how to measure culture, first, I think it's important to define culture so that we know that we're all on the same page. Most good leaders would tell you that culture is measured by what you tolerate. And that's true. If you tolerate a disrespectful behavior in staff meetings, guess what? You're going to have a very disrespectful culture. And it's true, that is subjective. One person's disrespect is another person being direct. But culture by definition is a set of values, expectations and beliefs. Most organizations have their values in the handbook that new hires read on day one and and then never hear about it ever again. Some companies have posters of their values or have them hung up on the walls, but usually or rarely make decisions using those values. We all work for those companies where they are hanging around the office somewhere and we never hear about it unless it's an off site meeting or maybe it's the all hands meeting. But the data shows that employees want to work for companies that have a purpose. I know, I know, I know the word purpose and mission. Those are buzzwords that are often overused, but they matter. Your culture has to connect what's important to the employee with what's important to the company. And if you haven't defined those values and what's important to the company, it's going to be nearly impossible to connect that with what's important to the employee. Because culture and more specifically, expectations create the roadmap for employee behaviors. Otherwise, you're at the mercy of the last organization who trained and developed that employee. Or worse, the last organization that didn't train and develop that employee. One of QWork's group employee values is integrity. If you lie to me, there's a zero tolerance policy on that and it's an immediate termination. My team understands regardless how bad the news is. Let's talk about it let's find a solution. Bad news isn't like fine wine. It does not get better with age. This is where I usually lose people. Culture's job is not to make you feel good. Let me say that again. Culture's job is to not make you or your employees feel good. Culture is not nap pods and ping pong tables and foosball and pool tables and beer refrigerators and well, okay, we'll let the beer refrigerator slide by. But that's not culture. That's a nice to have and a very nice to have at that. Those are fun things for the office environment. That's not culture. Culture is the framework and the structure to drive the desired behaviors. And core values are the central theme to your culture. So if you don't have a great culture, the first step is to define the values of your organization. Now, if you like your values, the next step is to define the meaning of those values and then take the steps to identify key behavior examples of what that core value represents. Once you define the values and provide behavior examples that go along with those values, you've now started to create your roadmap. Another example of one of our core values is kaizen, which simply put is just a Japanese term for continuous improvement. We've defined continuous improvement as a way to enhance the process, to create a mindset of constantly learning and accepting feedback from your peers. Then or next we provide behavior examples for what that looks like. So after you've defined your values, created those behavior expectations, now it's time to measure your employees performance around those behavior. You create a simple grading scale that really is measured three ways, plus, plus, minus, or a minus. The plus says that this employee demonstrates that core value. And you measure this for each one of your core values. The plus minus says sometimes that employee demonstrates that core value. The minus says your employee does not demonstrate that core value. If one of your employees measures that they do not exude that behavior, then they have 30 days to course correct. So then there's an opportunity to have a very direct and open and honest conversation about the desired behaviors that you're looking for. Most employees course correct didn't even realize that that was an issue because there are so many unspoken expectations in all of our organizations. Now it's okay to measure performance with KPIs, OKRs, or the latest AI dashboard that's on the market. They're all great and they're important, but they're only part of the equation. Culture is everything in your organization. If you've got employees that are having high performance but within a culture that's not great, you're going to lose that employee in time. We already know that 50% of the new hires don't make it to their one year anniversary. And in manufacturing, 50% of the new hires don't even make it to day 100. That is frightening knowing that you're going to pay anywhere between 100 and 300% of their annual salary as a replacement cost. And that's according to shrm, the Society of Human Resource Management. So as a reminder, culture's job is not to make you and your employee feel good. Culture's job is to set the framework and the expectations of the behaviors you desire. That's how you measure company culture. It's really simple. I highly recommend it. If you have any questions or comments, please go ahead and make comments. And oh yeah, do not forget to subscribe to this channel where we'll be talking more about leadership, culture and connections.
